Sanctuary
by Patcat
Summary: A safe place.


**Sanctuary**

"Alex, I think I've got something…" Bobby Goren was excited. He noted something in his notebook, and logged off his computer. "I've got to check it, though—there's a source at the main branch of the public library." He scooped up his coat.

"The one on Fifth Avenue?" Alex asked. "The one with the lions?"

"Yea, the one with the lions…You've been there, haven't you, Eames?" Bobby's tone suggested that the New York City Public Library was one of the world's eight wonders and no life was complete without regular visits to it.

Alex laughed. "I'm a native New Yorker, remember? I haven't been to the Statue of Liberty, or the top of the Empire State Building, or Radio City…"

"Ok, ok, you've never been there." Bobby held up his hands in protest. He paused for a moment. "Listen, you may need me if that report from the Florida State Police comes in, and I'll have to have my cell phone off in the library. If something can't wait, and you can't reach me, I'll be in the main reading room, right side. I'll get as close as I can to the door…"

"Oh, and what makes you think I want to travel all the way uptown to find you?"

"It's not uptown, it's midtown." Bobby wrestled briefly with his coat. "And you can get that visit to the Empire State Building in while you're at it." He gave her his most winning smile and rumbled away.

Alex huffed at Bobby's back, and returned to delving into the mysteries of their suspect's credit card information. An hour's investigation revealed several intriguing possibilities, but she was relieved when Captain Deakins approached her.

"Where's your partner?" he asked with the air of a man who was worried about the possible answers.

"He's at the main branch of the New York Public Library," Alex replied. "He claimed he had to follow a clue. I think he's going to try to climb the lions."

Deakins allowed a brief smile to cross his face. "Well, knowing Goren," he said, "it could be a stranger place and he could be doing stranger things." His attitude returned to the professional. "This just came across the fax. I think you and your partner need to review it. Be sure to make nice with the Florida folks—they stretched a bit to get this information to us."

Alex was already dialing Bobby's cell phone. "Yes, Captain—I'll call them as soon as I've talked to Goren." Deakins dropped the report in front of Alex and returned to his office. "C'mon, Bobby, answer your phone," Alex muttered, but it was clear he wasn't answering. "He could've put it on vibrate," Alex thought, but she remembered that Bobby hated the sensation, as he put it, of having bugs jumping in his pockets. "Besides," he told her, "Sometimes I don't want to be found." Alex sighed. "Looks like I'm going to the library."

Alex used the taxi ride to make a phone call profusely thanking the Florida State police for their help and to study the report. The information fit with what she and Bobby already had, but something was missing, and she hoped that Bobby had found that something at the library. As she strode up the steps between the two massive lions, Alex noted that the Empire State Building was, indeed, remarkably close. She considered that New Yorkers were often the most provincial and insular of people, not daring to move beyond the few blocks that made up their neighborhoods. Unless a case required it, she rarely ventured into midtown, and she was scarcely acquainted with Central Park. "That's going to have to change," Alex thought, "if only for me to take my nephew to see the dinosaurs at the museum and to run around the park."

The library's entrance hall was large, subtly grand, and softly lit. The receptionist/guard politely directed her to the reading room. Alex had seen pictures of the New York Public Library's reading room, but they failed to do it justice. The room was large, dark, magnificent and oddly welcoming. Rows of table dotted with soft, glowing lamps lay before her. Each lamp was glowing island in the dimming afternoon light, and Alex thought that each seemed a beacon guiding the explorers seated before them. She felt as if she were gaining some kind of wisdom just by being in the room.

Alex shook herself back to reality. Enough philosophizing-she needed to find Bobby. "Now," she thought, "did he mean his right or my right?"

He meant her right. She found him at the fourth table from the front. He had discarded his jacket and put it with his coat on the chair beside him. His tie was pulled loose and his shirt sleeves rolled up just below his elbows. Bobby was examining the document in front of him with the intensity of a surgeon about to make an incision. There was something, Alex realized, different about him, something in his shoulders, his posture, his eyes. "Relaxed," she thought. "He's relaxed and comfortable. Still intense, but he acts like, like he belongs here, that he's safe here." Another realization struck Alex. Bobby Goren was rarely, if ever, comfortable. Part of this was his size, of course—there were very few places big enough for his long legs, but the condition was more mental and emotional than physical. Bobby always seemed restless, not quite at home in his own skin. It was a quality he frequently used to frighten or flummox suspects, but this required only a slight exaggeration of a preexisting condition. Here, bathed in the glow of the table lamp, Bobby Goren was at peace.

He looked up, suddenly aware of her presence. Alex silently lifted the report, and Bobby nodded and cleared his belongings from the chair next to him. Adding her coat and purse to Bobby's pile, she placed the report on the table. Bobby quietly pointed to a couple of points on the document before him: Alex did the same with the report. The separate threads wove together before them, and Alex and Bobby had a complete case. They allowed themselves a shared smile before gathering their things.

"I'll get us a copy of this," Bobby whispered as they got up. Alex watched as he spoke to the woman behind the desk. There was a comfortable familiarity to their brief conversation, and Alex thought she heard the woman address Bobby as "Detective." They stepped out into the entrance area.

"It'll take a few minutes," Bobby said. "It's an odd shape. Let me buy you some coffee in exchange for your venturing into midtown."

A few moments later they sat on the library's steps in the shadows of the lions. It was just cool enough to make sipping the hot coffee a pleasure, but not for the temperature to slip beyond the protection of their coats.

"You like it here," Alex said.

"Yea," Bobby said. "I've always liked libraries, but what's not to like? A place with free books…"

Alex laughed. "I never spent enough time in them, I'm afraid. And when I did, it always felt like work."

"They never felt like that to me," Bobby said. He stretched out his long legs in front of him and leaned back with his elbows on the step behind him. "They always felt…" He paused to consider something. "Safe. Nothing bad could happen to me."

He drew his legs back and leaned forward to put his elbows on his knees. His hands clutched the paper coffee cup. Alex felt as something was about to happen. "My mom was a librarian—you know that, right?"

Alex nodded. There was a tremendous weight in her chest and every cell in her body was focused on him. In all of the noise of the middle of New York City, she could only hear Bobby Goren's soft voice.

"She'd take me with her to work a lot when I was little, before…before she got too bad. I can't remember learning to read…it's like breathing to me. I've always just done it. And when my parents would fight, or Mom was …well, I'd go to the library. The librarians at the local branch got to know me. They'd let me stay after closing…I'd help with picking things up, shelving…A couple of times I hid in the stacks and stayed all night. It wasn't scary….I was with my friends. With Robin Hood and Sherlock Holmes and Max and the Wild Things." Bobby stopped to take a drink of coffee. Alex tried to wrap her mind around the young Bobby's loneliness and fear.

"When I got older, the books gave me weapons. They could tell me something about what was happening to my mom, or at least give it a name. Even some ideas about my father. Ideas about …me…what I could do." Bobby stopped again, and looked into the distance. "Knowledge is power…isn't that the saying? I never had enough power, but at least I had some. And I had a place to go…a sanctuary…"

They finished their coffee in silence. Bobby stood up, and offered a hand to Alex. They were close to one of the lions, and Alex reached over and rubbed one of the massive stone feet.

"They have names," Bobby said.

Alex grinned. "They do? What?"

"Patience and Fortitude."

"Which is which?"

"I don't know," Bobby said. "But we can ask inside. There's an answer to most things..not all.. but a lot."

He held the door open as she went inside. Sanctuary, she thought, a beautiful sanctuary.

END


End file.
